Spring Break

Well I'm on break and, as promised, I am posting. My first spring break post is cheaply ripped from my MySpace blog...

Well I had to read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald for my American Literature class. I just finished the book tonight. It's not a bad book. I still think that A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway kicks the shit out of all the other ones we've read, but this is possibly my second favorite. There is a passage near the end of the last chapter of the book that deals with the protagonist, living in an area he is not pleased with (New York), recalling what it was like to go home to Minnesota as a college kid on the train from Chicago.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the
real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against
the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a
sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of
it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules... That's
my Middle West - not the wheat or the prairies of lost Swede towns, but
the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and
sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown
by lighted windows in the snow.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great Gatsby, The
Chapter 9

Fitzgerald put this feeling of winter and going home in a way I never could. This is my favorite part of the entire book. That passage. I seriously was nearly bored with the reading until I got to that passage. My eyes widened and I was lost in it. It was truly moving. That, in my opinion, is great literature.

I am happy to be on spring break, free from the clutches of the south. Back in my nice, northern, somewhat progressive town (they voted for Obama, have to give them some props). I am anticipating winter (something I do a lot in warm weather), when I can layer up and play in the snow while freezing my ass off. Nothing like it. I should be a little more grateful for spring, I suppose. It gets me away from the south for a week and before long will let me get outside with a weed eater and have some fun (weed eating is a hobby for me).